Terrell Owens Loves His Fans, and More From Twitter Analysis

Despite all the tired wisecracks about the triviality of Twitter’s content and the supposed narcissism of its users, it’s clear that the popular microblogging site has established itself as a playground for celebrities. Though the world may not care about the song currently playing on your iPod or the tacos you ate for lunch, people are interested in whatever Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift deem worthwhile enough to say.

With that in mind, the always-sophisticated Journal sports section recently bandied around this question: What could famous athletes like LeBron James be writing about that’s so fascinating to more than 2.1 million followers? To calm our inquiring minds, we read nearly 2,000 tweets written by the five active athletes with the most followers in the four major sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) and analyzed their content. Specifically, we turned to the Twitter feeds of:

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After the 2011 NBA Finals in Dallas, Terrell Owens tweeted: “Game 3 was a good 1!!! Good 2 b n Dallas! Heat’s up 2-1.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results were similar across the four sports—in a pleasantly surprising manner. Though all of the athletes’ Twitters were dotted with advertisements and self-promotion, about 24% of the tweets were directed at individual fans.

That’s not to say athletes are scouring the Internet for supporters and reaching out to them. Most of the tweets were in response to devoted fans begging for acknowledgment from their heroes. In fact, many of the everyday users who did receive a reply from an athlete note the date and time of the interaction in their biographical information on Twitter (“Reggie Bush tweeted me at 4:52 p.m. on June 3, 2011”). The effect on the average Twitter user of a simple “thanks” or “happy birthday” from a famous athlete was striking.

Of the athletes we tracked, Owens devoted the most space to responding to fans—70 of the 100 tweets we logged from him were in that category. Odom finished second, with 64 out of 100, but at least half of the people he wrote to sounded more interested in Odom’s wife, Khloe Kardashian. Generally speaking, the baseball players corresponded with fans the least—no doubt a product of the time we started our study.

Football players, who are currently waiting for the NFL lockout to end, certainly have more time to tweet these days. Baseball players, mired in the middle of a long season, do not have that luxury. In football, hockey and basketball, responses to fans were the most common type of tweet. In baseball, that finished second to tweets about baseball. It would be interesting to see if in the winter, when baseball is in its offseason and the other three sports are in full swing, the results would flip. It’s also interesting to note that 6% of NBA tweets were about time spent with family—perhaps a product of the season just ending.

To see a bit more on the Journal’s findings, check out today’s column for The Count.